Report On The Shifts In C-E Translation Of A Material Science Paper

Recent years witness an exponential upward trend of scientific and technological translation,which has promoted international exchanges and development of technology.This report takes a material science paper translated by the author as the research object,analyzes the stylistic features of ST(Source Text)and EST(English of Science and Technology),describes the main difficulties encountered by the author during the translation process,and gives the main shifting methods from the aspects of structure shift,class shift and unit shift under the guidance of Catford's translation shifts theory.The translation shift is an important translation method,which can be divided into level shift and category shift.The category shift includes structure shift,class shift,unit shift and intra-system shift.Catford believes that in the process of entering the TL(Target Language)from the SL(Source Language),translation shift is a departure from formal correspondence.The translation material of this report is an informational text whose main purpose is to convey information,express objective facts,and it focuses on content rather than form,and is characterized by technical terminology,clear logic,objective content,accurate language,and long and complicated sentences.Therefore,the translation shift is frequently used during translation.Category shift has obvious unique features in guiding translation practice,yet intrasystem shift rarely occurs between Chinese and English languages,so this report focuses on analyzing the guidance role of structure shift,class shift,and unit shift in the C-E translation.After summarizing,the author mainly uses the following category shifting methods while translating the source text: 1)structure shift includes the shifts from active voice to passive voice,from prepositional attributives to postpositional attributives,and from topic prominence to subject prominence;2)class shift mainly contains the shifts from verbs to nouns,from adjectives to adverbs,and from verbs to prepositions;and 3)unit shift mainly refers to the shifts from clauses to sentences,from phrases to words,and from clauses to phrases.It is concluded that Catford's translation shifts theory has strong operability and applicability in guiding the translation of informational texts such as material science.